Tag: social reformer

Using Facebook for Organizing

Facebook remains a social network that large segments of the population use daily and therefore cannot be dismissed as an organizing tool. For groups needing to reach out and build their base and mobilize people to come out to events, Facebook remains an important part of an organizer’s toolkit.

Given that the conventional ways that organizations have used Facebook to reach out (through a Facebook Page), are generating diminishing reach (since Facebook changed its algorithm), it’s important to explore how groups are making tactical use of the network through the platform’s Groups option.

Impact

One of the big returns of using Facebook Groups, vs. Pages, is that it helps campaigners get around the changes to Facebook’s algorithm, which now offers very low reach to Page followers unless paid advertising is used.

In terms of pure organizing benefits, using Facebook groups allows campaigners to:

  • Recruit new supporters by reaching out where people naturally spend their time
  • Establish a channel for rapid sharing daily/weekly actions and wins
  • Efficient setup and management of events via Facebook Calendar
  • Rapid member communication via groups and/or Facebook Messenger

When this might not work for you

Privacy and security issues

If privacy is a BIG issue given your campaigning context (see guide on digital security) then think twice before using Facebook.

Members with privacy concerns may not feel safe joining public discussions. In some areas, group members hesitate to use Facebook for fear of retribution by employers, local police or trolls who may see their Facebook activities.

If you want all members to be able to weigh in, consider using other channels.

If group work is your main activity…

On Facebook, conversations tend to be cluttered and scroll off the screen quickly. For group coordination or planning, use a limited-membership mailing list or a collaboration tool like Slack.

What this requires

Staff that can use their personal Facebook accounts to set up a group and moderate it

  • One person with a personal Facebook account needs to initiate a Group and serve as the Admin
  • Ideally, a few people should share the ongoing posting and moderation duties

Setup steps

Choosing the right group option and activating your group

  • Closed Facebook groups can be found by search engines but they hide much of the group’s information, including posts, events, files and photos. However, the group’s member roster is visible. Members can post anything they want in the group without their friends and families seeing it. Closed groups are great for recruiting and for member communication and coordination. However, closed groups are poor for outreach because events and other information cannot be shared outside the group.
  • Secret Facebook groups cannot be found by search engines or by searching on Facebook and give an extra layer of privacy. The member roster, posts, photos and all other group information is completely private and only visible to members. This makes secret groups a good choice for groups that need extra security or for team leads to coordinate.
  • Public Facebook groups are easy to find and join, but members’ identities and posts are not protected at all, making it a poor choice for Indivisible groups. For example, when a member posts something to an open group it may be automatically shared with their friends and family on Facebook, potentially alienating those who don’t share their beliefs.
  • Consider a multi-group strategy. Many Indivisible groups have multiple Facebook groups for different purposes. The most popular strategy is to create a Facebook page for outreach and a closed Facebook group for members. Another approach is to create a closed Facebook group for members and a secret Facebook group for leadership. These are good strategies for groups that embrace Facebook but do not want to deal with other, less mainstream solutions like Slack. Keep in mind that managing multiple Facebook groups will require more dedicated Facebook admins, and will make some tasks more complicated, like posting the same event or action in multiple groups.

Set up a group admin team responsible for management

Consistency is the key for groups of all sizes, and having the right team managing your group’s Facebook presence is essential. Every group should choose a Facebook admin or admins (using their personal accounts) and set the volume of Facebook activity to a level that can be maintained over time. The admin(s) will be responsible for:

  • Updating page/group info
  • Publishing content
  • Managing the calendar
  • Moderating group content
  • Vetting member requests

Vet New Members

It is vital that you vet requests to join your Facebook group. You may not want information shared within your closed Facebook group to be distributed externally and you certainly want to avoid internet trolls that seek to harass and bully people online. In some cases, exposing your group to a malicious outsider can even be a safety issue.

Here are some strategies for vetting people who request to join:

  • Know them. Only let people in who you or another member knows personally.
  • Meet them. Only allow people to join after they have attended a local meeting.
  • Make sure they’re local. Many groups want to keep membership restricted to their city, district, or region. Ask applicants for their city or zip code and redirect them to other local groups if necessary.
  • Ground rules. Post the criteria for joining the group and a Code of Conduct or Posting Guidelines. You can make accepting the Ground rules a prerequisite to joining a group. As in, users must answer question fields when they select “request to join”. The answers are then given to mods to approve/disapprove.

Maintain High Quality Posts & Post Regularly

Group admins are responsible for creating and editing group posts and events, and making sure they are high-impact and capture the attention of members.

  • Facebook Etiquette / Code of Conduct.Clearly state the type of information that your group should and should not post. For example, many groups instruct members not to post fake news, not to vent, not to “go low,” and sometimes even not to post mainstream news articles. Trigger warnings and content warnings have become super commonplace in feminist/anti-racist community organizing groups.
  • Include photos or images in posts whenever possible because they are statistically more engaging and Facebook’s algorithm values them higher, which means more people will see them. Photos are great but you can also create custom images with text and graphics with a simple design tool such as Canva.
  • Videos get the most views and engagement. Some groups have found that they get the most engagement by creating short action videos, like a 15-second clip of people speaking out in response to a local elected official’s question or position on a topic. Facebook’s algorithm promotes video and Facebook Live above all other forms of content. If possible, include subtitles in your posting since many users view Facebook videos with audio turned off. Try to upload the video files to Facebook rather than posting a link to the video on another platform, like YouTube. Facebook prioritizes natively-uploaded videos rather than links to videos on other sites.
  • Post daily. Post at least one new thing per day to keep things fresh and active. It is essential to be consistent. Facebook’s algorithm rewards consistent engagement—the more your members like, share, and click on your posts, the more they will be seen.
  • Be relevant. Above all else, post items that your members will love. Celebrate your successes and actions.Connect emotionally with your members and they will engage.

Post Clear Calls to Action (CTAs)

  • CTAs lead to action. Ideally your posts will ask your members to act. Sharing information is good; inspiring action is better. This is just like when you call your elected officials —voicing an opinion is good but presenting an “ask” is better.
  • Make CTAs stand out. Make sure your CTAs are always extremely obvious and clearly visible. For example, use simple text formatting: “CALL TO ACTION: …” or “TO DO: …” If possible, create a standard visual treatment (graphic) for “Action” or “Let’s Show Up” requests so they stand out from everything else.
  • Place important info at the top. Put the time, location, the action requested and other important details at the very top of the post so it won’t get clipped (Facebook only shows a couple lines of text by default).
  • Keep to a schedule. Many groups post CTAs once a week, like on Sunday, and post additional “red alert” CTAs as needed. Other larger, more active groups may post daily actions.

Small Facebook Group Management Best Practices

These recommendations apply to Facebook groups with less than 100 active members.

  • Group Admins. Appoint at least one group admin to manage the group’s Facebook account (using their personal accounts).
  • Always have a backup. Make sure someone else has account access and can run the group in the absence of the main Facebook admin. Some groups have been devastated when a group admin unexpectedly lost contact with the group without transferring the account.

Tactics for Making Sure Members (and Others) See Posts

Facebook uses a complex, ever-changing algorithm to determine which posts each user sees, and how high up they are on their feed, and when they get sent out. You can use some simple tactics to increase how often your posts are seen.

  • Add comments to posts/ Sharing your posts. Encourage members to leave a comment on CTAs (“done” or “called”), events or other important posts, or share the post itself. The Facebook algorithm will see the activity, assume it must be an interesting post, and then send it to more people.
  • Cutting & pasting posts. Some groups instruct members to cut and paste posts and repost them. This makes it much more likely that members’ friends who don’t follow your group will see them.
  • Remind members to visit the group’s page. The group’s page contains time-sensitive information about events and actions that may get lost on members’ feeds. Actively encourage members to check back regularly with the group’s page.
  • When it’s really urgent, don’t rely on Facebook. The tactics above will increase your success rate, but you can never reach everyone—and even if you do, they won’t see your post until the next time they happen to check Facebook. For rare, truly urgent messages, you still need a mailing list or another communications solution.

Large Facebook Group Management Best Practices

These recommendations apply to Facebook groups with more than 100 active members.

  • Group Admins, Editors & Moderators. At a minimum, have 3-5 people to manage the group’s Facebook Group:
  • 1-2 people managing publishing and moderating the group
  • 1-2 people vetting new recruits
  • 1 person managing the group’s calendar
  • Control posting. Limit members’ ability to post items and/or create an approval workflow involving admins approving new posts. For very large groups, only allow admins to post to prevent “flooding.” When a group is “flooded” with messages, Facebook does not always show posts in members’ feeds which may prevent important posts from being seen.
  • Heavy moderation. Larger groups are more in need of heavy moderation to shutdown the spread of fake news, bickering and other negative online behaviors. Moderators play an important role in keeping conversations friendly and should immediately intervene when people start arguing, imposing “purity tests,” or other negative interactions. For groups leading discussions on sensitive topics, some choose to set all comments to “require approval” by a moderator to keep the space safe for its users.
  • Editorial calendar. Some large groups find it useful to set up an editorial calendar to organize and optimize what posts go out when.
  • Get another event management / calendar tool​. You can only send event invites to all members of your Facebook group if it has less than 250 members. Otherwise, it will only send the invite to members who are your friends (you can manually add more individual names but this is impractical). When your group grows above 250, consider using a more robust calendaring tool like Google Calendar or, Eventbrite.

Address Privacy Concerns Proactively

  • Privacy ground rules. Clearly state the group’s privacy rules in the group’s information page and have moderators make sure members do not share each others’ personal information or share each other’s posts without permission.
  • Remind members about privacy, even if your group is secret. Moderators should remind group members periodically that no matter how “private” or “secret” their group is, they should be careful of what they post.
  • Example: We treat Facebook as more-or-less private, but nothing is ever100% secure, and being political activists makes us more of a target than the average person. So, as a personal rule, please “assume it will leak and be on the front page of the New York Times.”
  • Educate members. Encourage members to learn about Facebook’s privacy settings and adjust them. Facebook Tutorial: Facebook Privacy Checkup.

Tricky parts/ fixes

Your members could miss important posts.

You cannot guarantee that a post on Facebook will be seen by all your members! Even those who use it constantly will miss posts because of how Facebook’s feed works. For critical communications that you want delivered promptly to every member of your group, use an email list.

By Blueprints for Change

The Complete Guide to a Successful Membership Drive

The Best Way to Make a Goal

There’s a common mistake I see organizations making when they set goals for their membership drives.

They set goals like, “increase memberships,” or “market our organization more.”

The problem with these types of goals is there’s no way to measure real success.

If the organization gains one new member, did the organization reach its goal? How about 100 new members?

On top of this, it’s difficult to know what sorts of activities will lead to that goal’s success.

A better way to set goals is to use the SMART framework. SMART, according to MindTools stands for:

  • Specific
  • Measurable
  • Achievable
  • Relevant
  • Time bound

According to research by Michigan State University, writing down and sharing SMART goals with your team can increase the chances of success by 33%.

Here’s why.

Say for example, you have an organization of 500 members. A SMART goal might be: Gain 50 new members over one month — that’s a 10% increase over their base membership.

This goal is SMART because it’s Specific (50 members), Measurable (50), Achievable (10% increase), Relevant (members for a membership organization), and Time Bound (one month).

A goal like this also makes tracking it easy — half way through the month, the organization should be at 25 new members. If not, new tactics can be employed. To be even more transparent about this goal, the organization can post progress on social media, in the office, and on the website. That way, everyone knows where the goal stands, and can help out if needed.

If you need help setting your own SMART goal, here are some typical goals I see:

  • 10% increase in overall membership
  • 300% increase in average memberships for one month (ex. If you typically get 10 new members a month, can you get 30?)
  • A drive to get a specific type of member (ex. Students vs Professional members)

Once you have your SMART goal created, it’s time to create a budget.

In the next section, I share a common way the top membership organizations approach budgeting.

The One Metric that Will Set a Proper Budget

There’s one metric that makes budgeting for a member drive so much easier.

That metric is your member acquisition cost.

Your member acquisition cost is how much you should be willing to pay in advertising expenses to attract and sign up one new member.

The max amount most organizations are willing to pay is typically the equivalent of one year’s worth of dues, or one-third of the total dues a member gives your organization over the lifetime of their membership.

This example shows why.

Imagine your annual due is $100, and your average member stays with your organization for 3 years.

If your marketing expenses are the equivalent of one-year’s worth of dues per member, then the next 2 years are purely profit.

Here’s how that looks in figures:

Year 1:

  • Member acquisition cost (marketing and advertising expenses to get one member): $100
  • Member dues: $100
  • Profit: $0

Year 2:

  • Member acquisition cost: $0 (they’re already a member)
  • Member dues: $100
  • Profit: $100

Year 3:

  • Member acquisition cost: $0
  • Member dues: $100
  • Profit: $100

Total Cost: $100

Total Revenue (Dues): $300

Total Profit: $200

Of course, if you spend less than 1-year’s worth of dues on marketing expenses, then you end up with a higher return on investment (ROI).

Healthy organizations typically use this model, because it allows them to grow at a steady rate by consistently allocating revenue to attract new members, while still creating programs that serve current members (and cover organizational costs).

To figure out the budget for your membership drive, simply multiple your member acquisition cost by your goal.

Take this easy example:

If your member acquisition cost is $100 and your goal is to get 10 new members, then your total budget for your membership drive is $1,000 ($100 x 10 new members).

If you end up spending more $1,000, or your $1,000 doesn’t bring in 10 new members, then you’ve gone over budget. If you’re able to spend less than $1,000 and still get 10 new members, then you’ve turned a profit (and likely could have done more to attract even more members).

This is also a great way to evaluate the effectiveness of your promotional tactics — cut out activities that cost your organization too much to attract new members, and scale activities that are inexpensive, yet effective.

How to Create a Successful Strategy

The organizations who run the most successful membership drives all have one thing in common: they make the most use of their available resources.

That’s all a good strategy does.

To start, simply follow Erica Olsen’s advice (author of Strategic Planning Kit for Dummies) and make a list of all your currently available resources and how you can use them to your advantage.

If you’re having trouble creating a list, here are three places to look:

  • What people can help you out? Your board, members, volunteers, donors, business partners, supporters, industry contacts, etc.
  • What locations do you have available at your disposal? Local library, schools, conference center, your office, a park, community center, local restaurants/bars, etc.
  • What creative skills do your board and volunteers possess? Photoshop, video editing, graphic design, painting, event planning, speaking, cooking, singing, other special talents, etc.

Once you’ve got an inventory of all available resources, it’s time to figure out the best way to use them to grow members.

Some organizations think they have to get super creative here, but not necessarily.

For instance, I’ve heard stories of telephone campaigns that were super effective — and all that takes is a couple hours from a few motivated volunteers.

When thinking of ideas, it’s also helpful to look through your organization’s history to see what’s worked before. Try reaching out to similar organizations or chapters in different cities to see what’s worked well for them too.

If nothing in your list of resources is popping out to you, here’s a list of successful membership strategies I’ve seen work well in gaining a lot of new members:

10 Proven Ideas for a Successful Membership Drive

1) Free Luncheon

The Nacogdoches County Chamber held a “Taste the Chamber” free luncheon for members. All members had to do to attend was bring a non-member friend. The chamber also encouraged members to attend by giving them $100 if their friend ended up becoming a member too.

Besides providing a delicious lunch, the chamber gave a 30 minute presentation at the end, which talked about the benefits of joining the organization.

At the end of the luncheon, 50 new members signed up. On top of this, the additional membership dues of $12,000 more than covered the cost to provide lunch and give away the $100 incentives.

2) Charity Fun Run/Cycling Event

Kelly (name changed for privacy), the Executive Director at a small cycling club held a charity cycling event in her city. During the registration process, new participants had the option of paying an additional $15 to become a member of the organization (a 50% discount from the club’s regular membership fee). She even beefed up the registration forms with an overview of the club and testimonials from a few current members.

By the time the event was over, not only did the club raise over $50,000 for a local charity, but Kelly welcomed 37 new members into the club.

If you’re not a cycling club, but want to run a similar event, it turns out that Fun Runs are the most popular way small nonprofits maximize funds, increase member participation, and minimize coordination costs.

3) Phone/Email Campaign

The Association of Talent Development: Greater Philadelphia simply made a goal to reach out to all the prospective members in their contact database. They simply made a list of all the prospects and contacted them one by one over the phone.

By the end of the year, they gained over 100 new members through this initiative.

4) Networking Event

Networking events are an excellent way to attract new members.

In fact, according to the Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report, networking with others is the number one reason why people join membership organizations.

For example, the Association of Talent Development: Wisconsin mailed out a networking event invite along with a free drink ticket and appetizers to 70 non-chapter members in their community.

Twenty-five people ended up attending, and five became members that evening.

5) Annual Conference in a New Location

Every year the Collegiate Information and Visitor Services Association chooses a new city to host its annual conference. This allows them to advertise the event to different communities. During the event, they promote the benefits of joining the organization. This strategy helps them grow nearly 200 members a year.

6) Business Spotlight

If you’re a Chamber of Commerce, or local business association, why not try hosting a Business Spotlight. This is the strategy of Catherine Wygant Fossett of the Institute for Family-Owned Business. She organizes an after-hours event at a local business, where members can receive a behind-the-scenes tour and get to know local business owners better — it’s always a big draw in bringing current and potential members out.

7) Invite a Popular Speaker

Many associations I’ve talked to bring in new speakers on a monthly basis to keep attracting new audiences.

In fact, this is the single strategy of TED — the nonprofit that spreads ideas through powerful talks of 18 minutes or less. Over the last 30 years, they’ve brought in nearly 100,000 speakers to speak on everything from beatboxing to self confidence. This has been so effective that on their YouTube channel alone they’ve already garnered over two billion views.

If you’re thinking of bringing in a speaker at your organization, but don’t know where to start, we put together a simple guide that can help you out.

8) Digital Ads

According to the Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report, 56% of associations found that ads on social networking sites (LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.) were the most effective digital marketing tool to bring in new members. If you’d like some help on creating Facebook ads for your nonprofit, we’ve put together a simple guide to get you started.

9) Incentivize Members to Evangelize

Similar to the Free Luncheon The Nacogdoches Chamber of Commerce puts on (in point one), the Collegiate Information & Visitor Services Association (CIVSA) creates some friendly competition between current members as a way to attract new members.

Here’s what they do:

Any current member that a non-member to their annual conference and gets them to join is entered into a gift basket draw. CIVSA also arms their members with social media share packages before the conference to help them spread the word and create a consistent message.

10) Give Away a Free Resource

Dr. Samuel Dyer of the Medical Science Liaison Society offered a free salary survey (something really valuable in his industry) on his website in exchange for someone’s email address. This tactic gained him over 1,500 new subscribers. He then began marketing the benefits of joining his organization to these new subscribers and many became paying members. In the same way, consider offering a free, valuable resource in exchange for an email address. Then, begin marketing your membership and events to these subscribers. Just be sure to comply with email regulations when collecting emails (like GDPR).

Once you’ve got your membership drive idea, you’ll still need to create an easy way for new members to sign up for your organization and pay. In the next section, I’ll explain the best way to register new members.

Why Paper Membership Forms Are Bad for New Members (And What to Do Instead)

Do you have paper membership forms? Do you ask new members to pay for their dues by check?

Take a moment to imagine the experience that creates for new members.

They just decided to join your organization, so you hand them your new member form. To fill it out, they’ve got to sit down and find a hard surface (I’ve seen people fill out forms on the backs of others before). When they’re done, they have to find you again and hand you back the form.

Now they’ve got to pay their dues. To do that, they have to go home and find their checking book. Then they’ve got to mail the check back to you, or remember to bring it to the next meeting.

None of this creates a great experience for a new member. In fact, it’s an outdated process that creates a lot of work, and sometimes a poor impression of the organization, especially if someone feels nagged about forgetting their check.

On top of this, what happens when a new member wants to join, but isn’t physically there? What if they’ve found you on social media at home, or a current member convinces them to join over coffee?

That’s why creating a quick and simple process to register and pay for membership all at once, wherever potential members are is important — you won’t miss out on any potential members, or dues.

The best way to do this is to offer online registration with payments.

In fact, organizations who switch to an online process typically see an immediate boost in registrations and payments.

For example, when Gary Rubens from the Ski Club of Washington DC began accepting online payments, within one month of promoting his club’s upcoming winter trip, all spots were filled and the club’s cash flow increased by $18,000, allowing Gary to cover all his deposits — something that had never happened at his club before.

In the next section I’m going to go over one of the best options for membership organizations to create a simplified online registration and payment process.

By https://www.wildapricot.com

Email Tips

Image: Courtesy of Pixabay

Here are some email tips and a worksheet to help you plan when writing to or asking something of your supporters.

Write an email asking people to do something specific
  • Sending emails to a list of people is a great way to keep in contact and ask them to specific things like signing petitions and coming to events.

Plan your email

Before you start writing, make sure you know what you’re asking for and why:

Before you press send

  • Ask someone with fresh eyes to proofread your email
  • Check all the details (dates, times, contact details) are correct
  • Make sure all hyperlinks work

Other rules (only to be broken with good reason!)

  • Good email is highly structured! Follow this guide.
  • Think about what makes life easier for the reader, not what makes life easier for us!
  • If we are trying to get someone to do something, we should ask them clearly to do that thing, and the fewer different asks the better. Lots of options is easier for us but overwhelming for the reader, and the more options we provide the less likely the reader is to do any of them.
  • Only ONE hyperlink destination, which may be repeated two or three times.
  • This is not a newsletter, with lots of different options, it is a single ask email.
    ○ The exception is if there’s a step-down ask – something to do if the person can’t do what we most want
  • Use the email to say what you want to say – don’t put the content in an attachment. That forces the reader to open a second thing just to read what you have to say!
  • Emails come from a person, e.g. Helen, ACF Community Darebin
  • Is there a user-centered theory of change? Spell out why our supporters should spend their time on this ask. Prove why it is plausible and worth it FOR THEM (not for your group). How will it make a difference to what they care about?
  • For the same reason, it’s about “you”, “we” and “us” doing things – not them to doing us a favor.
  • Tone is personal, casual, to a friend, not formal.
  • Yes you really do have to tell the challenge, solution and ask in 150 words before the first link.
  • Use bold letters to highlight key phrases of the text but not entire paragraphs. Italics can emphasize the odd word, like you would if you were talking.
  • NO HEADLINES in an email – there is a subject line for that.

By Australian Conservation Foundation

Reasons to Recruit Online Volunteers

Here are but 10 reasons for an organization to engage in virtual volunteering:

1. Extend Your Resources

Online volunteers, just as those volunteers who work onsite, extend the resources of an organization. The additional help augments core staff efforts and allows an organization to do even more. They and other volunteers are not, however, replacements for employees.

2. Expand Your Reach

An organization that embraces virtual volunteering gives volunteers new ways of supporting causes they feel passionate about. This can lead both to expanding the involvement of onsite volunteers and to involving new volunteers altogether.

3. Volunteering Anytime Anywhere

Virtual volunteering can remove some time and physical barriers for both current and new volunteers. While the time required for volunteering online is real, not virtual, volunteers can provide a service, ask questions, or provide feedback at whatever time is convenient for them, outside of a few required live meetings with staff or other volunteers.

4. Stay Ahead of the Curve

An organization that uses the Internet to support and involve volunteers is sending a message to its supporters that it is modern and efficient, that it wants to provide convenience to its volunteers, and that it understands the realities of the 21st-century workplace. As the competition for press coverage and funding becomes more intense, it has never been more important for nonprofits, NGOs, government agencies, and others to exude such an image.

5. Accommodate any Lifestyle

Virtual volunteering allows for the participation of people who might find onsite volunteering difficult or impossible because of a disability, mobility issue, home obligation, or work schedule. This, in turn, allows agencies to benefit from the additional talent and resources of more volunteers and allows the organization to demonstrate its commitment to being an accessible organization.

6. A New Way to Find Volunteers

Potential volunteers not reached by traditional means may be reached online. The Internet makes it easy to reach particular audiences quickly, such as people with a specific skill or representing a specific demographic. This does not mean the Internet will totally replace other forms of volunteer recruitment, such as a booth at a community event or registering with your local volunteer center (which these days is likely to put local information online as well). It simply means you have an additional avenue to use to recruit volunteers.

7. Reach a Younger Generation

The Internet offers a proven tool for recruiting younger volunteers, a difficulty many organizations face. We have noted earlier that online volunteers may represent a variety of populations. While it is certainly true that people under the age of 30 are more prone to use online technologies than any other age group, even people in their 40s have used the Web for most of their professional lives.

8. Increase Your Capabilities

Some or most of your organization’s mission may be best served by online volunteers, especially if your organization’s membership is dispersed across a region or a country, or even around the world. Three examples of entirely virtual organizations are: Project Gutenberg, mentioned earlier in this chapter; LibriVox, a nonprofit that coordinates volunteers making freely-available online recordings of public-domain books; and the Aid Workers Network, an online resource for people working in aid, relief, and development. These entirely virtual organizations could not exist if they only or primarily involved onsite volunteers.

9. Save the Environment

Online volunteers can be environmentally friendly. Online volunteers create no car exhaust, do not require a parking space, and do not need the organization to provide them with a desk or chair. And people are not buying new, additional technology just to volunteer online; they are using technology for a variety of other tasks. Even so, you may want to encourage your online volunteers to dispose of electronic waste in an ecologically friendly manner.

Moreover, volunteer resources managers who work online have no restrictive limits on giving and sharing information with volunteers. For instance, instead of printed volunteer policies, which must be copied for onsite distribution and quickly go out of date, managers can share the most current policies online, in a public or private area, for any volunteer to access at any time. Instead of giving a volunteer mounds of printed material that are not environmentally friendly, the manager can point to online resources for the volunteer to read from home. And the volunteer can read as much as he or she needs to for an assignment (and, beyond that, what he or she wants to).

10. Better Record Keeping

Managing volunteers virtually can create automatic, extensive records of both volunteer activities and interactions with volunteers—records that can be used to generate statistics, provide quotes for an upcoming grant proposal, or evaluate the overall volunteering initiative. An organization that manages virtually gains an archive of e-mails, instant messages, chats, online forum messages, photos, and audio and video recordings relating to volunteer discussions and activities.

This article is an excerpt from The LAST Virtual Volunteering Guidebook: Fully Integrating Online Service into Volunteer Involvement, by Jayne Cravens and Susan J. Ellis, © 2014, Energize, Inc. Found in the Energize, Inc. Online Bookstore.